The Halloween Conjunction -- how secret, *really*?

[g33k]

Immortals can be killed on Halloween, as per the Big Reveal in CD by Bob.
He cites it -- his knowledge of it -- as the source of his fear of Mab.

But... how secret can that info be, really?  It's a basic "fact of the universe."  It is likely something that a really clever theoretician (such as Butters) could work out, with enough understanding of the magical Laws of the Dresdenverse (I'm not saying Butters does know it; I'm unclear how much he got into the deep fundamentals with Bob, given that he was ALSO busy with his occult-Batman project).

And there are so damned many of these Immortals.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands (across the whole world and many cultures).  Nemesis certainly winkled the info out of either/both of Aurora & Maeve, and other powerful mortals may have tricked or seduced or coerced the info out of other Immortals.  Then there's Odin.  He likes it this way:  the spice of the risk, the hunt, the game; the odds are awfully-high, honestly, that Odin has told more than one mortal this secret.  And given how damned many of the Immortals do come out to "play" on Halloween, they too seem to find the "game" worth playing.

Plus the aforementioned many Immortals -- maybe one (or several) of them (thus far offstage) have their own reasons for "spilling the beans" to one or more mortals.  As one example:  it could be a Power-Play:  if you have a cult-following of True Believers, getting 99% of them killed to get a few incredibly-powered-up might be a really-worthwhile bargain.

All in all... I don't actually think the "secret" was as much of a secret as Bob made it out to be.

[Con]

It is one of those things that's if not obvious in hindsight makes sense when you hear it.

Like I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of ritual involving rhe artefacts from the vault having a ceremony on Easter. Or that where court are vulnerable on valentines day. Forest people might be more attuned on thanks giving. You can apply holidays various importance and effects on the Supernatural. Doesn't mean everyone would know of all of the above as common knowledge.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

There probably was about 2000 years ago, Jim is awfully quiet about Jesus which means he either wants to steer well clear of it, or it’s a plot point in the future books.

Part of the WG became human to ascertain the human condition, died and was resurrected and rejoined the WG. Somehow this led to the Denarians becoming active. Are the Denarians therefore essential to the WG’s ultimate plan? They should have been minted before the Swords. Was the aim to create the swords? We know Namshiel helped secure the last Titan acting against the proscription of the WG and putting humanity at risk. Namshiel must have redeemed himself in part. We know Nick thinks there are traitors to his mission, and that he will be considered a ‘Saint’. Is he being played if so by whom? Lucifer? Uriel?

[Mira]

But... how secret can that info be, really?  It's a basic "fact of the universe."  It is likely something that a really clever theoretician (such as Butters) could work out, with enough understanding of the magical Laws of the Dresdenverse (I'm not saying Butters does know it; I'm unclear how much he got into the deep fundamentals with Bob, given that he was ALSO busy with his occult-Batman project).

  I don't think it is all that secret, but having said that I think it is easier said than done, as they say.
I seem to remember the phrase, "it is possible..." So yeah, it maybe possible to kill Mab or Kringle on Halloween, but that doesn't mean it is easy, that is why they have lived as long as they have.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

You can get good quality computer models of the solar system, and unless Jim is cheating by moving Planetary bodies around none of the putative years of Harry’s birth shows any significant conjunction occurring 666 years including comets and meteor showers.

What if it’s as simple as every child born at dawn on the 31st October Every 666 years?

In the early cycles you might get a single child, but as human population grew so would the number of Starborn. That means you need no particular geographical area. A talented practitioner could chase dawn around the globe using the Never Never time dilation, as well without breaking the seven laws. Only the Gatekeeper and Margaret could do that with any great certainty.

What if that is Nicks unknowing purpose? Population control?

[g33k]

You can get good quality computer models of the solar system, and unless Jim is cheating by moving Planetary bodies around none of the putative years of Harry’s birth shows any significant conjunction occurring 666 years including comets and meteor showers.

What if it’s as simple as every child born at dawn on the 31st October Every 666 years?

Problem is, we don't know what the "Starborn" conjunction is a conjunction of; it might not be anything that the rest of us (or the computer models) would a priori see as "significant."  We just don't know.

Sure, dawn on 31 October, every 666 years ...  works for me.

Honestly, I think Jim was just being lazy.  He wanted his "chosen one" figure to be born when "the stars are right" so he just wrote that... without ever deciding what the specific conjunction was, or researching any conjunctions, or anything like it.

Same is true for the ambiguity around Harry's birth-year:  I don't think Jim ever researched all the specific clues he dropped, to match a specific year.  He just went, "that's about right" off the top of his head, and sent his draft to the publisher.

Remember:  Storm Front wasn't written to be a successful novel.   
Storm Front was written as an exercise in proving his instructor was wrong!   

[g33k]

... Doesn't mean everyone would know of all of the above as common knowledge.

Doesn't have to be "common knowledge" to be something that's sufficiently well known to already be a cat that's out of the bag, a barn door post-horse-bolting, etc.

My point is... it's seems likely to me that This Is Known (for example, I bet most or all of the Senior Council knows it, either as a fact they learned or as a deduction they realized from their theoretical understanding of magical & supernatural laws).  They don't talk about it because they're protecting all the Stupid Kids who would go trying to steal some immortality for themselves every Autumn...

My very-immediate followup point is: how worried is Mab, really, that Bob knows this?

And my conclusion is:  Not worried.  At all.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

I do wonder if Jim has need of crowdsourcing an answer.

Dawn is a time of renewal where old enchantments are ripped away. It’s a physical sensation for a practioner.Halloween is a day even an immortal can die and power can be transferred. We have been given the 666 year cycles. Someone is setting these rules it’s either Jim or the White God.

The conduction is the time day and year, 666 is the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. We know we are due for a Big A Apocalypse, is the Endgame from the last conjunction? The final Battle.

[The_Sibelis]

Sure, dawn on 31 October, every 666 years ...  works for me.

Honestly, I think Jim was just being lazy.  He wanted his "chosen one" figure to be born when "the stars are right" so he just wrote that... without ever deciding what the specific conjunction was, or researching any conjunctions, or anything like it.

Same is true for the ambiguity around Harry's birth-year:  I don't think Jim ever researched all the specific clues he dropped, to match a specific year.  He just went, "that's about right" off the top of his head, and sent his draft to the publisher.

Remember:  Storm Front wasn't written to be a successful novel.

did he actually name Harry's birthday in SF?🤔 I don't recall when his birthday first came up actually. Though, between the time he penned the outline for SF and actually published it was a few years, and after he'd wrote the outline for his whole 20 books Plus BAT trilogy.
It's not the Jim's not lazy, I'm quite positive he admits it lol. But start to line up different characters birthday's and he clearly had some intentions behind them. Though if he'd connected the overall cycle of anything to the specific dates of birthdays yet... I actually don't think so. Think that came later. So that part might be mushed together like you say.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

This thread covers all books and WOJ.

[The_Sibelis]

I don't see your point.  The above context is the implication SF wasn't meant to be successful so nothing was planned out around the birthday besides I cool date to pick. So first I ponder when Harry's birthday actually came up, point out other birthday's have the same kinda consideration around their picking, like Thomas on Valentine's day. An point out the timeline between when he actually wrote the first draft and published it had a big overaching story brainstorming session. If your having trouble following along, feel free to ask.

[g33k]

I do wonder if Jim has need of crowdsourcing an answer ...

As to Harry's birth-year?
There already is one:  https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php/topic,1592.0.html
(n.b. that timeline was very-much a "crowdsourced" aka collaborative project)

It really mainly proves that Jim didn't actually work this through.

[The_Sibelis]

Because someone else did a timeline and noticed errors? I'm sorry, but woj is Jim's quite aware of discrepancy in the timeline as far back as his battle with Justin

Regarding Harry’s first use of magic, in Proven Guilty he tells Molly the story, and in Ghost Story he reflects back on that.  The stories overall are the same, but there are a lot of small details.  That can be explained, but I was wondering if that was proof that changes [unintelligible] may have happened in the series?
Yeah, it’s happened several times, and I’m not going to tell you where because I’m going to use that in a book.  I’m trying to write Harry as much like a person as I can, and people remember things differently, especially over time.  You think you remember thigns perfectly, but a lot of the time, I’ve run into people that I haven’t seen in 20 years, and they’ll say, “Do you remember this?” and I’ll say, “No, I don’t remember that at all!”  They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, you totally got into this fight and beat this guy up.” “I did?”  “Well, it pretty much looked like it from where I was standing.”  And I don’t remember it like that at all, I just remember helping him up off the floor.  Or something like that.  But the point is that we remember things in very odd ways and you can see it in the short term when an investigator goes around and tries to get all the witnesses who just saw something to tell him what they saw.  And everybody saw something a little bit different and it just gets more skewed and magnified over time.  So, Dresden was telling Molly what she needed to hear, mainly, because he was concerned about her.  And he was more or less stating what happened, but he’s not the most reliable narrator in the whole world, because people aren’t.  And that’s one of the great things about people, I think, UI don’t know if it’s going to kill us, or if it’s going to be the only way we manage to get by, is by saying, “Oh, I’m really not quite sure what happened that far back, maybe we should just move ahead.”

so it doesn't prove he didn't think it through, it proves we don't understand the timeline itself and why there are these discrepancies. An unstable time loop has been the most theorized one at this point.

[g33k]

I don't see your point.  The above context is the implication SF wasn't meant to be successful so nothing was planned out around the birthday besides I cool date to pick. So first I ponder when Harry's birthday actually came up, point out other birthday's have the same kinda consideration around their picking, like Thomas on Valentine's day. An point out the timeline between when he actually wrote the first draft and published it had a big overaching story brainstorming session. If your having trouble following along, feel free to ask.

I suspect (but do not know for a fact) that Jim Butcher's initial ideas of HBCD & DF included a vague "Chosen One" concept.  That he picked "Halloween" as "a cool date."

Jim was already a RPG'er, a LARP'er.  Me may have had pagan friends... and even if not, the ideas of "Samhain" and the "thinning of veil between mortal and otherworld" had definitely seeped into geek/gamer culture by then!

I don't know if he had the "Starborn" notion, or any "the stars [specifically] are right."  He could have been a "Chosen One" because of his bloodline, or because of some Sacred Chrism applied at birth, or any of several other ways; AFAIK, nobody has ever sought answers from Jim as to why he picked a "Starborn" / "conjunction" origin-story for his Chosen One.
(It could as easily have been something about that liminal, All-Hallows-Eve state and just a 666-year accumulation of supernatural potential that settles on one "lucky" mortal every 2/3-millenium...)

I'm just going to assert that Jim didn't actually research that there was any "meaningful" or "significant" conjunction (in the conventional (i.e. astronomical or (more-likely) astrological senses of meaningful or significant) that happens on Halloween every 666 years, and no other times.

There is no there there.

He did a bunch of brainstorming, but I don't think he ever went back to these origin-story questions (or maybe he did... but could not discover such an astro<whatever> event, and he was stuck with some of his 1st-draft "early-episode wierdness").

[g33k]

Because someone else did a timeline and noticed errors? I'm sorry, but woj is Jim's quite aware of discrepancy in the timeline as far back as his battle with Justin
 <WOJ from some q&a session>
so it doesn't prove he didn't think it through, it proves we don't understand the timeline itself and why there are these discrepancies. An unstable time loop has been the most theorized one at this point.

Jim isn't actually addressing a "timeline" there, or specific & objective facts like birth-dates, and x-before-y-but-after-w sequences, &c.

He's talking about Harry's own memories of his life, and stories he tells about those memories, and the fact that people don't remember well, and are "unreliable narrators" (Jim repeatedly calls out Harry repeated as an unreliable narrator, to a degree that makes me suspect Jim sees Harry as less-reliable than average!).

He even states that Harry was narrating the story in ways to increase its emotional impact, "telling her what she needed to hear;" it was only "more or less what happened."  It isn't really to the point of a "timeline" (or the consistency thereof).